


some people never try

by sibley (ferns)



Category: Quantum Leap
Genre: Dancing, Genderqueer Character, Holography, Other, Trans Character, somehow both established relationship and pre-relationship.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:15:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29007405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: “We should dance,” Sam blurts out.Al gestures to the crowd. “Be my guest.”“No, I meant—us. Like, you and me at the same time. We should dance together.”
Relationships: Sam Beckett/Al Calavicci
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	some people never try

**Author's Note:**

> he/hir sam indulgence :)

“Who is this?” Sam asks, leaning against the ridged bark of the oak tree behind him. Hir hands are pushed down into hir pockets so he can rub hir knuckles against the fabric that lines them from the inside and the loose shirt Tony was wearing means he’s not too hot despite it being a midsummer night, and he can’t help but smile at the loose mix of people half dancing and half socializing around hir.

“It’s Al,” Al says, very helpfully. When Sam rolls hir eyes and doesn’t so much as pretend to laugh at his joke he shrugs. Can’t win them all. “It’s the Bellamy Brothers, ‘Let Your Love Flow.’ 1977. Came out last year for Tony.”

“...I think I remember it.” Sam tilts hir head back and strains to hear it better over the dull chattering of the people nearby. There’s clouds drifting over the moon.

“You should, it’s one of Tina’s favorites, she plays it all the time.” Al sways a little to the music, giving marginally more effort than Sam, who’s idly tapping hir foot. “Well, lately she’s been trying some mid-eighties hits instead.”

When Sam strains, he can faintly hear the music bouncing off of sterile corridors and sleek walls instead of drifting lazily through the open air. Tapping a pencil along to the music and occasionally humming it to hirself when he was waiting in line for coffee. They’re memories that make hir smile even if they’re not the clearest they could be.

“We should dance,” he blurts out.

Al gestures to the crowd. “Be my guest.”

“No, I meant—us. Like, you and me at the same time. We should dance together.” Sam smiles at the strangers so he doesn’t have to look at Al. “Like those nights in the lab.”

He remembers those. Tina’s album CDs playing on loop. Al telling hir that he needed to loosen up and take his mind off things before he gave hirself an ulcer. Rome wasn’t built in a day and Project Quantum Leap wasn’t going to be any different.  _ No more breakthroughs tonight, just fun. You remember what  _ fun  _ is, right, Sam? _

“Of course you remember that.” Al sighs, long-suffering. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m a hologram. None of these people can see me, and I can’t touch you. You’re going to look like a lunatic.”

“I’ll call it celebrating Tony’s life,” Sam says. “What man wouldn’t want to dance with his friend after cheating death?”

Technically, they don’t know he’s for sure not going to get hit by that car since it isn’t 2 AM yet. But Sam came to this party on the other side of town to make sure he didn’t, and so far there hasn’t been any reason to take Tony’s body back to that street, so he feels pretty safe in hir assessment that things are going to work out fine for Mr. Ogawa.

“Hologram, Sam. I’m a  _ hologram.”  _ Al waves his arms around, hands passing through not only Sam but the tree he’s leaning against, too. “‘Sides, even if I weren’t and they  _ could  _ see me, I don’t think Tony’s friends would appreciate it.”

“C’mon,” Sam coaxes, stepping away from the tree. “So what if nobody will see you? Maybe Tony got high!” Marijuana could probably make someone act like that, right? He’s pretty sure it could. Sam wouldn’t know, he’s never tried  _ any  _ drug. Except Prozac. But that’s different. Regardless, he’s  _ certain  _ there’s sometimes weed at parties, so there’s that to make it a plausible excuse.

Now it’s Al’s turn to roll his eyes. “Sure.  _ Fine.  _ Only because if I don’t, you’ll go around telling people you took some LSD so they definitely shouldn’t call the police if they see you trying to do one of those fancy twirls with the empty air.”

Sam laughs and shoos him into the group of people. The song switches and this time he remembers what it’s called before he needs to ask. Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway, “The Closer I Get To You.” Another one Tina used to play. She said it helped her focus.

“I’m not looking forward to getting elbows put through my face,” Al remarks, dodging someone’s arm even though it’s not like it would do anything if it hit him. Sam frowns at him and he turns his ducking into some kind of little half-step kick-thing. “See, look, I’m dancing.”

“You know I meant dancing with  _ me,  _ Al.” Sam very firmly takes his hand, clasping hir fingers over not-quite-empty air. “It’ll be fun. Just pretend you can feel me.”

“...You’re lucky I only dance with girls who are taller than me,” Al says, trying very hard to suppress his smile.

“I thought that was because you couldn’t find any girls  _ shorter _ than you,” Sam says cheekily. He grins at Al’s affronted gasp. “Come on, like this.”

Dancing with a partner who he can’t actually touch is weird. Really weird. Every other time he’s danced with someone else like this it was someone he could touch. No wonder Al thought it would make Tony look a little bit crazy. At least no one is paying attention to them. And even though it’s new and weird, it’s not  _ that _ hard. 

“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” Al admits. But he doesn’t pull his hand out of Sam’s and makes an effort to put it wherever he moves hirs to like they’re really touching each other. Despite the way he glances at the people around them, and the way he pretends to groan at hir, he’s actually smiling.

“See, it’s not so bad, nobody’s even looking at us.” Sam tries to pull Al in for a spin at the same time Al tries to do the same to hir and almost falls flat on hir face when he crashes right through him. Dammit. Okay, it’s harder than it seems like it would be. And going all the way through Al like that kind of feels like walking next to an electric fence even though by all logic it really shouldn’t. Maybe it’s psychological. 

“...Oh, I thought I was doing the…” Al shakes his head. “Eh, it doesn’t matter.”

Sam frowns. In the background, the track switches again. “I Just Want to Be Your Everything” by Andy something-or-other. “Doing the what?”

“The… y’know.” Al half shrugs and momentarily disappears as a pair of women go right through him. “The man parts. I thought you’d be doing the lady bits—”

“Don’t say that.”

“Seriously, Sam? Fine. I thought you would be doing the parts girls are supposed to do. Even though it wouldn’t really work anyway, ‘cause, like I said,  _ hologram.”  _ He slaps the girl dancing with her boyfriend next to them in the face and his hand just sinks right into her cheek. “Those are the parts you’d do back when the only way I could make you take breaks was to bribe you.”

“Dancing with you is a bribe now?” Sam laughs. Hir chest feels light and fluttery. Maybe it’s the shirt Tony’s wearing. It  _ is  _ very well-ventilated. This is absolutely nothing like forced intermissions while working on the project. Now it’s just him and Al alone in a crowd of people. They can’t even touch each other. He should be sad about how different it is. But he just… isn’t. 

What’s the point? This is as normal as hir old life ever was to hir now. Every day it gets harder to remember what it was like to look like hirself again. Being Tony, being all of these people, that’s who he is now. That’s hir life. And dammit, it’s  _ nice  _ to have somebody along for that insane ride. Even if they can’t actually touch. 

(And, okay, it’s not like he  _ misses  _ the constant fume of cheap cologne, but existing in a kind of sensory stasis from hir best friend has really been getting on Sam’s nerves lately, in more than just the physical sense. Human sensory maps are based off of more than just sight and sound. But whatever—he’d much rather have this much of Al than nothing at all.)

Al scoffs but can’t keep a straight face despite his best efforts and eventually cracks under the pressure to laugh, too. “If you’d danced with me properly, you’d  _ know  _ it was worth being a bribe.”

Something about that makes Sam laugh harder. It’ll almost be time to say goodbye to Tony, he’s pretty sure. It’s got to be close to midnight by now, as the track changes to Looking Glass’ “Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl).” He has to say, whoever is in charge of the music for this is a giant sap. But he doesn’t have to give up this body yet and he really loves hir best friend/the only lifeline he has and recognizing a lot of the music without needing to ask Al for help  _ feels  _ like a pretty big win.

Sam’s known he loves Al for awhile. It’s not new. Everybody loves Al. They have to in order to put up with him. And he’s the only tether Sam has to hir home. And he’s hir best friend. And he’s saved hir life and the lives of god knows how many people a million and one times over. And he’s the only one who knows about hir, except for Ziggy, because you can’t keep anything from a computer. And he calls hir his best girl. And he’s the only reason he didn’t completely lose hir mind when he was trying to build Project Quantum Leap from scratch in the first place. Of  _ course  _ he loves Al.

And he knows Al loves hir too, otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered after only the sixth time Sam ignored his advice and almost got hirself killed because of it. And he wouldn’t act like an angry rooster whenever somebody so much as implied they were insulting Sam. And he wouldn’t spend time with hir like this, when there wasn’t someone’s life on the line, when it was just the two of them having fun together and making the best of the weirdest situation anybody had ever been thrust into in history. Of  _ course  _ he loves hir.

Maybe it’s enough to only be loved like this by one person. To have only one fixed constant. Other people he meets, even the ones who somehow know that he’s  _ Sam  _ and not Dylan or Max or anyone else they’ve managed to see hir through. As nice as it is—and it was  _ definitely  _ nice as Dylan—it can never last. It feels like Al’s the only one who will always be there. Probably because he is.

“You know I love you, right, Al?” He spins so Al won’t have to see hir waiting for an answer even though the song isn’t exactly one that makes people want to dance. He should wait for a new one. 

“I know.” He does. They’ve been friends for years. Sam wears hir heart on hir sleeve and is not at all subtle about who he loves. And he can’t not love hir back. He has since Sam accidentally blew up a room and almost got fired for it, and that was only a week after they first met. That was before he really knew hir at all. And now that he does know hir, and  _ especially _ now that he’s seen hir in a thousand ways and a hundred lifetimes, he…

It’s embarrassing. Tina would never let him live it down. But there are some things they don’t need to know back at the ole HQ, right? He doesn’t tell them everything, only the things they need to know to get Sam out safely and move onto the next leap. He hasn’t told them about their… not-very-scientific investigation into how Sam wants to be seen. About hir being  _ hir. _ That’s still their little secret. (Well, theirs and Ziggy’s. He had to tell  _ someone  _ and Sam said it was fine.)

“I love you too, Sam,” he says, and even though he’s expecting Sam to smile and try to hug him, the expression on hir face when he winds up stepping through Al yet again (seriously, you’d think he’d have gotten better at this considering how long they’ve been doing it) is still… amusing. That’s the only word he was thinking of that starts with “A.” Amusing. Not adorable, that’d be stupid. He clears his throat and gestures to Sam’s watch—Tony’s watch—with a little flourish. “It’s almost time.”

The song changes. More Roberta Flack, “The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face” this time. Much, much slower than “Brandy.” The shifting of the people around them is getting slower, too.

Sam looks up at the sky again. He can’t see the stars, even though the light pollution here isn’t as bad as it will be in 1999. But the clouds have stopped covering the moon, and the nail-thin crescent of it hangs over their heads. The warm breeze feels nice. “Here’s hoping the next leap is as nice as this one, right?”

It must be psychological, because he definitely can’t physically feel Al’s arms when he wraps them around hir waist. But there’s still something there. Like the edge of static after rubbing a balloon on wool. He knows it’s just hir brain filling in the gaps. But it’s close enough to contact for it to feel… for it to feel like he’s a little less alone.

It’s not easy to try kissing a hologram. Especially since if he closes hir eyes then there’s no way to tell that Al’s even there at all. But the clock ticks to 2 AM and everything flares bright white and blue in a familiar but no less disorienting spin and for just a second static jumps almost painfully across Sam’s lips and—

Well. It’s not the same as kissing someone in person. Whether back home in hir own body or tethered to somebody else’s. But it’s special enough that he’s still smiling when he finds hirself squinting up at a broken ceiling he’s pretty sure this new body just crashed through, and somehow he knows Al is too.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @augustheart.tumblr.com and I think about Quantum Leap more and more with every passing day.


End file.
